In episode 1.05, each member of The Starter Wife‘s inner circle pursues a secret romance. Joan’s sleeping with the lushy British actor; Rodney is jumping through hoops (actually, through windows…not to mention climbing trees) to keep his fling with the action hero under wraps. And then there’s Molly, who proposes a casual sex relationship to her writing group instructor, Zach, whom we know to be engaged in more than just the one extracurricular activity.
While each of these relationships seems more unsustainable than the others, the question the episode raises is not “When will it all come crashing down?” as much as “Are our characters capable of emotional detachment when sex is involved?”
We’re not left hanging very long. Halfway through “Das Booty Call,” Molly puts an end to the suspense: “Women have been sold a bill of goods that sex doesn’t change anything, but it does.”
She finds her script on Zach’s night stand, marked “predictable” in red ink. Maybe they meant for the end of the episode to hearken back to this moment. Maybe, when it’s revealed that both Joan and Molly need the emotional commitment of their prospective lovers, it’s supposed to have a trite-but-true clout with the viewer. Whatever the intention, the result feels sluggish and conventional.
The Starter Wife is usually so good at complicating Molly’s dating life with conflicting interests, pride issues, concerns about her daughter’s well-being, doubts regarding her own feelings, needs, her professional future and so on. “Das Booty Call” attempts to fulfill the miniseries’ legacy of the real-life romantic debacle with a scene in which an old flame “accidentally” proposes to Molly, she inadvertently says yes, and they both later act out a sort of “Whoopsies! I love you but not like that” reconciliation.
The re-ignition of the Lou affair is not very well played-out, but makes us nostalgic for Molly’s divorce days. Of course, she was filled with turmoil during the miniseries, but it certainly made for a more nuanced and tragic romantic career. The problem with this reminiscence is that it doesn’t allow The Starter Wife to move on, to abjure her title. Her new relationship seems doomed to fairly immediate failure. We may discover in episode 1.06 whether the new series’ interest in her happiness comes at the expense of the complexity of Molly’s romantic attachments–the most compelling aspect of the original.